Marketing Automation Best Practices, Tips & Tricks

Use PURLs With Any Landing Page

“We love the idea of using PURLs to track and personalize our campaign, but….”

“We’ve invested a ton of time and money into HubSpot landing pages”

“We’re already experts at building WordPress pages”

“We don’t have time to learn a whole new system in order to use personal URLs”

“Why can’t you plug your personalized urls and tracking into what we already have?”

We’ve noticed a trend in our market. More and more clients have been approaching Boingnet to help integrate their direct mail with their digital marketing, but are pushing back at having to build new landing pages to support their campaigns.

Fully integrated campaign tools aren’t for everyone

We think, and our customers think, Boingnet has a pretty slick solution for folks who want to implement multi-channel marketing campaigns. Companies, agencies and printers are able to quickly roll out integrated direct and digital campaigns using Boingnet.

We’ve disrupted the multi-channel marketing software market with a system that’s fast, easy and affordable.

However, the world is changing.

Scott Brinker is a smart guy who tracks the marketing technology landscape. For the past several years he’s created the above supergraphic that lays out what’s happening in the marketing tech world. Here are the total number of marketing technology companies that Scott’s been following:

2011 – 150 Companies

2012 – 350 Companies

2014 – 1,000 Companies

2015 – 2,000 Companies

2016 – 3,500 Companies

2017 – 5,000 Companies

There’s a lot of good software out there, designed to solve just about every marketing problem imaginable – including software to build landing pages for marketing campaigns. Here are three of the more prominent systems that get mentioned when we speak with clients:

Given the success of these landing page building platforms, it’s not surprising that more clients are pushing back on the idea that they need to implement a new platform to get the benefits of personalized URL marketing.

A Fundamental Change – Use PURLs With Any Landing Page

We recently pushed live a new release of Boingnet with a new campaign type that fundamentally changes the way that personalized url landing pages can be used by marketers.

Boingnet Audiences campaigns deliver the tracking and personalization of traditional direct mail PURL campaigns, while using landing pages built and hosted elsewhere.

No need to learn a new landing page system. No need to implement a new marketing automation platform.

You can now use PURLs with any landing page.

It’s a revolutionary, disruptive new technology. We think it is so important, we’ve applied for a patent.

Learn More About New, Patent Pending Boingnet Audiences Campaigns

Have you spent tens of thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours setting up HubSpot? Now you can track your direct mail responders as PURLs drive them into HubSpot with personalized landing pages.

Does your agency develop WordPress or Unbounce landing pages for clients? Now you can overlay personalized content with CRM or 3rd party data, so your direct mail, email and web content is consistent and powerful.

You can even set up Audiences to drive direct mail recipients to e-commerce platforms like Shopify, Magento or WooCommerce. You can attribute sales of merchandise immediately to specific direct mail campaigns. Instant, immediate attribution, as sales occur.

Build A PURL Marketing Campaign In 10 Minutes

There’s a lot of fancy tech under the covers of Boingnet Audiences. While we get excited about nerdy stuff, our first customers think the coolest thing is you can build a cross-channel PURL campaign in less than 10 minutes. Why is this now possible? Because there’s no need to build a new landing page.

How It Works

Audiences is a new type of redirect campaign – a concept we pioneered years ago. Essentially, the PURLs that are generated in Boingnet “bounce”, or redirect the user from their PURL to a different URL in a matter of milliseconds. Boingnet records the fact that the recipient responded to the mail or email, and the URL they are being directed to takes over from there.

Identify Pages To Track

Not only can we tell you a recipient has hit their PURL and been directed to a URL, but we can track their activity across an unlimited number of web pages at the destination system.

We can tell you what pages your direct mail audience goes to. How many pages they visit, how many times they go back. We can track Goal URLs – typically a thank you page or a purchase confirmation. In virtually any landing page system.

The first step is identifying the starting URL and your goal URL. Goal URLs that are reached will be counted as “Conversions” in Audiences Reporting.

Insert The Audiences Tracking Code

How are we able to track activity on all of these pages that live in other systems?

Set Up Personalization

Boingnet’s Variable Data and Variable Logic have long been considered the most powerful, yet easy to use, personalization tools for direct marketers. We’ve created a point and click interface to create highly personalized experiences on PURL landing pages and email marketing that has been used in thousands of campaigns over the years.

Now you can use them in any landing page. Audiences has a “Pop Up” Variable Data and Variable Logic Builder, along with a WordPress plugin and a Chrome extension to help you set up personalization in your HubSpot, WordPress, Unbounce or other landing pages.

Here’s a few things you can do:

Greet your audience by name. Like you experience when you visit a local store with a familiar owner.

Pre-fill form fields. Research shows that people will fill in empty fields (like email address or phone number) when you give them a head start on the form.

Personalize Call To Action Buttons.

Show different text, images, videos or links to different segments of your audience.

Audiences will insert data from your Boingnet list into the pages you’ve personalized. Or, it will use content assets (like forms, images, etc) stored in HubSpot, WordPress, etc in logical expressions. You simply set it up in the page editor of your chosen landing page platform. Here’s a sample WordPress screenshot:

It takes minutes to set up high converting, personalized landing pages. In any modern landing page system.

Let The Analysis Begin

After you’ve tested and published your campaign, Audiences will keep track of each member of your direct mail list. Who responded online. What pages they visited. Whether they reached the goal URL and converted. You can slice and dice your campaign activity within the Audiences Dashboard the moment the first visitor responds to their direct mail.

The Game Has Changed

By de-coupling the PURL and the landing page, we’ve opened up a whole range of new possibilities for marketers.

The time and expense of setting up PURL campaigns has been slashed. Millions of existing landing pages can be used in conjunction with direct mail, with better tracking and personalization than any other system.

You can now integrate personal urls into your existing, or even your ideal, marketing stack.